1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to content management, and more specifically, to preserving a user's experience with content across multiple computing devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
More and more people are using diverse hardware devices and software applications to experience content items (e.g., files or information). Many content items in the form of digital data are nowadays compatible across various computing devices (e.g., an MP3 player, a personal computer, or a PDA). For example, someone can listen to an MP3 file using a portable MP3 player as well as a personal computer or a PDA. As our computing devices such as portable communication devices become more powerful, people are presented with increasing number of computing devices to access the content items. The problem occurs when someone is accessing content item on one device, stops, and then accesses the content item from another device. Presently, there is no acceptable way to preserve the user's experience on one device.
Conventional applications generally do not store a location where the user previously stopped accessing a content item. As a result, when the user subsequently plays the same content item, the user must search manually for the previous location of the content item to avoid viewing or listening to portions of the content item previously experienced. Searching for the previous exit point of a content item is inconvenient and time-consuming for the user, especially when the content item has a long running time or when the application supports limited or no search functionality.
Some conventional applications store and retrieve previous location of the content items after accessing the content items. For example, a media player may store the location where a user left off in the previous play of an audio file. When the user subsequently accesses the same audio file, the media player continues the audio file from the previous location. Therefore, a user of the media player can continue the audio file without searching for the previous location in the audio file. But even for applications in which previous locations are stored, information indicating the previous location in a content item (hereinafter referred to as “location information”) generated by one application is not usable in a different application. The location information for applications is generally stored in a file accessible to or compatible with only the applications that generated the location information. Therefore, even when there is a file including the location information on the computing device, a user may still have to manually search for the previous location in the media file when the user accesses the content item using a different application.
It is more problematic when the same content item is accessed by different computing devices. Someone using multiple computing devices must search for previous locations of a content item where he discontinued the content item every time he changes the computing device in order to avoid repeating the portion of a content item he already experienced. When multiple computing devices are used to access the same content item, a file including the location information of the content item may not be present on the computing device that the user is attempting to use. This makes it more difficult to implement content management that allows a user to automatically continue accessing the content item from a location where the user discontinued from a prior access to the content item.
This inconvenience is not limited to time-based content item, such as audio or movie files. Users accessing static content items on different computing devices can also experience the same inconvenience. A static content item is a content item that does not incorporate time-based video or audio files and thus remains the same regardless of progress in time. An internet webpage consisting only of text and picture files is an example of the static content item. Even for such static content item, the location information can improve a user's experience and efficiency. For example, a person uses a personal computer at office to work on a static content item, in this case a MSword or Excel document, and then returns home to work on the same document using another personal computer. The reader may waste his time searching for the page or line of the document where he previously left off. The time can be saved if the user can automatically access the previous location (i.e., page and line of the document) after switching to a different computing device.
Therefore, there is a need for a content management method and device that allows a user to experience content items consistently and efficiently regardless of changes in the computing devices or applications used by the user. Further, there is a need for a content management method and device to automatically continue the content item from the location in the content item where the user previously left off.